


The Apotheosis of Odin

by water_bby



Category: The Bifrost Incident - The Mechanisms (Album)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/water_bby/pseuds/water_bby
Summary: Both Loki and Thor ask, "Odin, what have you done?"Odin has done what she has always done.  What she has to.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Apotheosis of Odin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mayarene Rose (Paradise_of_Mary_Jane)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane/gifts).



Odin waits, staring out the glass wall of her observation deck while her train rushes through her wormhole towards Midgard. If she were the type of woman to fidget, she’d be pacing around her private car or, at least, tapping her fingers on the arm of her chair. But she trained herself to stillness over a century ago, so she simply sits, staring into the corner opposite her chair, ignoring the security camera she knows is hidden in the fantastical crown molding. There is nothing for the camera to see. Not here. And the camera in the engine has been carefully redirected.

She spends most of her time remembering. Remembering the moment she thought up this train through the stars. Remembering the shock of the first test flight. Remembering the anger when Loki not only abandoned the project but started working to stop it. Remembering the satisfaction of stealing Loki and her knowledge from the executioner and forcing her to start working on the train once more. Remembering the joy of finally, finally, being able to take this trip to her destiny.

She has lived a long life, but she’s not yet ready to see it end. During the test flight, something had whispered that she would be great beyond her imagining, and she is accepting the offer. At least, that what she thinks she was promised.

So here she is, waiting. She’s finished the work she needed to do, plugging the Midgardian prisoner into the engine and making her speech to the gathered dignitaries of Asgard. She wonders idly what the others will experience here in the Bifrost, but she does not spend much time thinking about them. She doesn’t really care what happens to anyone on the train or to any of the planets in the Yggdrasil system.

Odin had taken Asgard a century before. That’s not what the history books say. It’s not even what her people whisper behind her back. But it is the truth. She had looked at the others who might possibly challenge for rule of Asgard when Ymir stepped down, and she had planned how to remove each contender with the same attention to detail she has always applied to her engineering projects. Some had simply found themselves focusing on other, less likely to be found worthy, projects. Some had been found wanting in loyalty, sent to prison or the executioner. When it was time, Odin had been the obvious choice.

She has already waited decades, so she can wait the three days it will take her train to arrive in Midgard. Assuming it does take that long. She has never been able to pry out of Loki just what to expect, much to her annoyance, but she has known since that first test flight that her train will make her great.

Odin remembers it, the first test flight, where she and Loki and Baldur looked at each other afterward, awe in their eyes. Well, awe in Baldur’s eyes. Odin trusted that hers showed only satisfaction for successful movement forward on the project. Loki. Well, Odin now thinks she’d misread Loki. What she had taken for awe was more likely horror. But Loki and Baldur were the ones who had come away with the secrets needed to finish the project, while Odin had only the conviction that it must be done.

Odin remembers discovering that Loki had run for Fenrir and the hot wash of anger at Loki’s attempt to deny Odin her due when Loki had sent those missiles. Still, she has now made good use of Loki’s knowledge, even if Loki does not now remember what she had learned on that first flight.

Odin is not surprised that Thor has dared to challenge her, though she is a bit surprised that the challenge is about her treatment of Loki. She has already prepared for this and has him pulled from her car, off to be as much a prisoner as Loki as Odin’s train heads towards their destiny.

Odin is surprised to be confronted by a Loki who is beginning to remember, who understands, in a way that not even Odin does, what is happening. But Loki cannot change what had been preordained. Odin wonders what this means for Loki. She already knows what it means for her -- power beyond that she has wielded as the ruler of Asgard. 

After banishing Thor back to his cabin, after Loki wandering back out of her car, Odin is not really surprised when her train jerks for a moment before continuing its rush towards Midgard, the lights of the Bifrost changing as she watches. She thought it would take longer for the Midgardian’s heart’s blood to run out. But Odin doesn’t care. What does it matter if the change comes now? The end will be the same, and all it requires is that the train eventually arrives. 

When her private car begins to tremble, Odin leans against the wall, enjoying the wash of color across her fingers. The time has come, she thinks, and then she loses time. (She thinks she loses time. No, she’s sure she’s lost time, because otherwise she’s repressing the memory, and she refuses to have repressed the memory. She’s not Loki, tormented by what she only half-remembers.) Nonetheless, when Thor bursts back into her private car, she has changed. She may now be more snake than woman, but she is still Odin Allmother, and no Asgardian upstart with delusions that he can match her will take her position from her.

Odin glories in the ways that she can strike blows on her opponent that are not bound by the human form. But just when she is sure that her next blow will rid her of Thor, his attempt to flee moves him further into her car. And then he drives his hammer through the window of her observation deck. He wraps an arm around her, using the momentum of his run across the room to push both of them out of the train. She screams as Thor drags her through the broken window of her train car.

Screams from the shards tearing at her scales.

Screams from rage at being removed from her train, cursing Thor for dragging her with him.

Screams as she sees her train slow, the cars separating from the engine, cursing Loki for having remembered enough.

Screams at the loss of her role in the destruction to come as much as for the loss of her life.

No one notices.


End file.
